In through the outfield

6 May 20086 March 2013

Facebook in Reality

I still haven’t quite made my mind up about Facebook.

Our Facebook get together in March was a great success, but I’m still not sure how many serious applications the service has.

I have also stopped ‘friending’ everyone I come across and started removing ‘friends’ who I don’t actually know.

It would be better if there were categories such as family, friend, acquaintance, colleague (or is that just the librarian in me wanting to categorise everything)?

To give you a sense of how ridiculous some aspects of Facebook are, idiotsofants.com have produced a video called Facebook in Reality. It is currently running at 460,000 views and comes up first when you type Facebook into YouTube.

Enjoy.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrlSkU0TFLs&hl=en]

6 April 2008

Alex Bellinger interviews me for SmallBizPod

As I mentioned in my previous blog post on our first Facebook event at the Business & IP Centre, Alex Bellinger the founder of SmallBizPod was there with his microphone. His podcast based on interviews at this event were delayed a little by Alastair Darling and his 2008 Budget, but have now gone up on the site here.

Alex Bellinger Although I felt I rambled on a bit, Alex seems to have kept most of the interview in the final edit. It is a mixture of chat about the Business & IP Centre and the role of Facebook and blogs to promote it to a new audience.

The show also included a cross section of interviews with some of the 50 or so members of our Facebook group who showed up on the evening. Talking of which, I see our membership has now grown to nearly 1,400 members.

6 April 2008

Promoting new books with video

It would seem that for some publishers the future of book promotion lies in video.

Steffi McBride So much for the film or TV series of the book, how about the dramatised promotional video of the book that has yet to be printed.

You can judge for youself by ‘viewing’ the forthcoming title from Blake Publishing. The Overnight Fame of Steffi McBride is the memoir of a fictional young soap star who becomes a national icon to be published in September 2008.

“All Steffi’s dreams come true when she lands a starring part in the country’s biggest soap opera, has a number one Christmas single and wins a Bafta. The whole country falls in love with her, including the pop star she had a crush on all through her teenage years. But someone out there knows a secret about Steffi’s past and heartless media revelations blow apart everything she ever believed to be true about her family and about herself.”

It’s not quite my cup of tea, but I’m sure they have done their market research.

2 April 2008

Nice Girls and Quechup + clarification from a Director

(Since I wrote this original post I received a comment below from Glen Finch a Director of Quechup clarifying my problems).

As someone who monitors Web 2.0 developments I was aware of Quechup and their controversial email spamming techniques.

However as they had claimed to have turned over a new leaf I was somewhat surprised to receive an email from Nicegirl, who indeed did look like a ‘nice girl’ with her adorable puppy.

Intrigued, I registered with Quechup and was somewhat disappointed to be greeted with this page.

Yet another example of empty promises of Web 2.0?

I should say that I was somewhat suspicious of Nicegirl’s user name. As I would be receiving an email from father@christmas.com.

A new comment from “Glen Finch” was received on the post “Nice Girls and Quechup” of the weblog “In through the outfield”.

Comment from Glen Finch:
As the first comment rightly states you were already a member of Quechup, registered with the username ‘infield’. You then registered (a second new user) and are suprised that you did not have a message in the inbox. Why would you? – this was a new user you had just created, if there had been an email already there from a member this surely would have been cause to raise suspicions, but not the opposite. Let me clarify a few points for you, I do so as a director of Quechup and as spokesman for the company. 1. To receive notifications from Quechup you have to be registered as a user, this is only done by people completing our registration form. We have never purchased emails, shared emails or acquired emails from anyone, period. Moreover our policy states that we will not sell or share members emails or other details and we never have. This means at some stage you or someone that knows your email address registered for you at Quechup. We track and store registration and login details so we can provide the date, time, IP address and country of location where the registration took place. 2. Regarding our address book checker. Yes we received several complaints about the way this worked in September 2007. How it worked was printed directly on the page above the feature (which was optional), the checker has worked this way for nearly 2 years without such complaints. However, given the amount of complaints we realized that address book checkers were much more common on such sites and that users were not reading how they worked before using them and that the manner in which Quechup’s worked was not what had become the perceived norm. We recoded it and changed the way the feature worked within 4 working days. As testiment to Quechup’s policy against spam we have always had the following policies in place: A member cannot send an invite to an email address more than once to stop pestering type spam. Quechup does not send ‘reminder’ emails for invites (unlike other sites such as linkedin) Members can only send messages to 1 member at a time to stop the service being used for bulk mailing. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Quechup is certified by SenderScore the industries leading email ‘SafeList’ accreditation program. Companies such as Windows Live/Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail and SpamAssasin use and rely on SenderScore for providing a SafeList of email senders. In total over 67% of consumer mail boxes in the world depend on SenderScore as to wether email is safe or spam. Maintaining this accreditation means adhering to strict anti spam policies and meeting criteria from Windows Live, Yahoo!, SpamAssasin and other sources on a daily basis.

31 March 2008

Web 2.0 explained in Plain ‘English’

Explaining different aspects of Web 2.0 presents quite a challenge, so it is great that Sachi and Lee LeFever have created a set of videos to do the job for us.

They aim to make topics such as Twitter and RSS accessible to their ‘moms’, which is good news for the rest of us. As they say in their About Us section of their website: “We are two passionate people and Common Craft is our company. Our product is explanation.”

Here is their ‘Wikis in Plain English‘ to give you a flavour.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-dnL00TdmLY&feature=user]

P.S. The reason for the quotes in the title is of course because the Plain English is in fact Plain American via Seattle, Washington State, U.S.A.

14 February 2008

The librarian as sherpa

One of the earliest links to my blog was from Library Sherpa.

The reason Tracy, the creator of the blog chose the name made me wonder if this could be a good way of describing what librarians do in the modern age. I like the idea acting as someone’s Sherpa Tensing, navigating them through the treacherous world of information peaks and troughs.

“Why Library Sherpa?!
According to the American Heritage Dictionary, a sherpa is defined as:
“A member of a traditionally Buddhist people of Tibetan descent living on the southern side of the Himalaya Mountains in Nepal and Sikkim. In modern times Sherpas have achieved world renown as expert guides on Himalayan mountaineering expeditions.”

I came up with the name as an homage to the indigenous people of the Himalayas, combined with my profession. The original intent for this blog was to be a forum for me to assist or guide people through the rocky terrain of the library and librarianship.”

11 February 20087 January 2013

Blogging for small business success

There has been an exponential rate of increase in blogging in the last couple of years. Although there is a danger of a new blog getting lost in the mass of postings, blogging can be a key factor in business success.

The wonderful people at Cobweb Information for Business give some useful tips in their latest free e-newsletter, which I have included below. I believe the key to success is having a passion about your area of expertise. I remember soon after starting this job trying to convince Michael North the owner of the Olive Trail in Bloomsbury to start a blog on Olive Oil as he had such an incredible knowledge and enthusiasm.

1. Blogging takes commitment and time. You’ll have to dedicate your time to providing customers and other site visitors (and this may include other bloggers) with new information. There’s nothing more off-putting for readers when they visit a blog only to find stale, old content. This doesn’t mean you have to type forever – some of the best blogs are short, pithy entries that the reader can view and understand easily.

2. The content must be relevant. Blogs can help to position you as an expert in your field if they’re written the right way. They also enable you to promote your products and services with the personal touch, as you can link to news articles, pictures etc, to keep the content fresh and inspiring.

3. Links are important. It’s easy to forget the business behind the blog and get lost in the blog’s content. Build links to the site from other websites related to your business or your expertise. More links generally mean more traffic and a better search engine position.

4. Blogs are interactive. Readers can normally post their own comments to your blog entries. This allows existing and potential customers to comment on your product or service, or the process involved in buying that product or service. Bear in mind that it might take some time for someone to comment on your entries, so persevere. Install a site counter or check your website statistics to see how many people are viewing your blog. Blog Patrol has free blog counting tools you can download.

5. Is there a call to action? Does the blog link through to a special offer or service you’re currently running? Calls to action will help you win new customers or encourage existing ones to try out new products or services.

6. Can you make cash from your blog? For instance, is there advertising space on it which an organisation could use to market to your audience? Is there an affiliate programme you can join? Post some affiliate links within your blog and you could earn money when a reader clicks through to the affiliate site and buys a product.

7 February 20087 January 2013

Angels Den introduces those seeking money, for their business, to over 3,800 Angels

Our British Library Entrepreneur and SME Network Facebook group goes from strength to strength with 993 members as of this evening.

Isabel Oswell our intrepid head of Business Marketing is a reluctant convert to social networking, but has promised to be our thousandth member. So her time is rapidly approaching.

A recent message on our wall looks interesting. It is promoting Angels Den, a website that introduces those seeking money, for their business, to over 3800 Angels.

In the last week I have twice been asked how to find business Angels. This could well be the answer.

“Never mind that we have the largest number of angels in Europe – more importantly we are funding 17% of deals on the site. We promise no Pinstripes, no jargon – just good common sense and the grooviest Angels in town.”

Unlike many commercial services aimed at business start ups AngelsDEN are refreshingly up front about their charges, and go on to explain why they charge.

“Why isn’t it free of charge?

Many people have asked us why we charge for this service…well, we’re running a commercial enterprise and we need to cover our admin and promotion costs, pay staff to check your submission and pay for the upkeep of the website. We don’t get any public funding for Angels Den so that’s why we need to charge.

To set up a serious business with outside funding you do need to be prepared to spend some money. In some ways the £499 (plus VAT) fee also acts as a filter for people who are not really committed to doing what it takes to be successful or aren’t sufficiently far down the line to be ready to get funding.”

30 January 20087 January 2013

The Google Generation’ – no good at researching on the web

The launch of the British Library and JISC commissioned report ‘Information behaviour of the researcher of the future’ has sparked significant debate in cyberspace, which is excellent news. Here is a link to a 35 page pdf of the full report: ‘Information Behavior of the Researcher of the Future’

Here are links to a selection of comments:
arstechnica.com

informationweek.com

svextra.com

marketingpilgrim.com

arcagility.wordpress.com

blog.searchenginewatch.com

Globe and Mail – 24 January

methainternet.wordpress.com

The Instructional Media Center

mrschu81.wordpress.com

The Observer, 27/01/2008, p.12, John Naughton

Joanne Jacobs